Medical Kidnapping in the U.S. – Kidnapping Children for Drug Trials

War Crimes Tri­bunal at Nurem­berg. Adolf Hitler’s per­son­al physi­cian, 43-year old Karl Brandt. Brandt was also Reich Com­mis­sar for Health and San­i­ta­tion, and was indict­ed by the U.S. pros­e­cu­tion with 22 oth­er Nazi doc­tors. Brandt was found guilty of par­tic­i­pat­ing in and con­sent­ing to using con­cen­tra­tion camp inmates as guinea pigs in hor­ri­ble med­ical exper­i­ments, sup­pos­ed­ly for the ben­e­fit of the armed forces. He was sen­tenced to death by hang­ing. Image Source.

The U.S. fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has man­dat­ed drug research with chil­dren. The need for chil­dren to par­tic­i­pate in drug com­pa­ny research is high, and the temp­ta­tion to over­step parental rights to force chil­dren to par­tic­i­pate is great. Researchers pub­licly admit using mon­ey and oth­er rewards to obtain par­tic­i­pa­tion of chil­dren in their drug tri­als.

Orga­ni­za­tions that advo­cate for the rights of par­ents to make deci­sions regard­ing their children’s health­care are find­ing that fos­ter chil­dren in CPS cus­tody are being enrolled in drug exper­i­ments with­out parental approval. State Child Pro­tec­tive Ser­vices are enrolling chil­dren in drug exper­i­ments with­out parental approval or court orders. How­ev­er, those who con­duct these drug exper­i­ments for phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies, and those who are charged with mon­i­tor­ing such research, do not see a prob­lem with their recruit­ment meth­ods.

There is a Shortage of Children for Drug Research Studies

Kay­la and Han­nah Diegel suf­fer from a rare form of mito­chon­dr­i­al dis­ease, and were removed from the cus­tody of their par­ents in 2014 for alleged­ly dis­agree­ing with their doc­tors. Are they a sub­ject of a drug tri­al? Orig­i­nal Sto­ry.

In a 2011 arti­cle in the Jour­nal Pedi­atrics, researchers dis­cussed the prob­lem of recruit­ing chil­dren for par­tic­i­pa­tion in clin­i­cal tri­als for drug test­ing. Researchers from Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty (Colum­bus) and Case West­ern Reserve Uni­ver­si­ty, con­firm that the US fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is man­dat­ing that chil­dren be includ­ed in clin­i­cal research stud­ies.

Dr. Tish­ler, PhD, and Dr. Staats Reiss, PhD stat­ed:

Since 1994, fed­er­al guide­lines have called for the inclu­sion of chil­dren in clin­i­cal stud­ies. Relat­ed fed­er­al incen­tives and laws such as the “pedi­atric rule” (the Pedi­atric Research Equi­ty Act) and the pedi­atric exclu­siv­i­ty pro­vi­sion have also been passed to increase the num­ber of pedi­atric clin­i­cal tri­als launched by phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies. Despite these man­dates, the allo­ca­tions to pedi­atric clin­i­cal tri­als in fed­er­al and pri­vate research and devel­op­ment bud­gets have remained lim­it­ed. In addi­tion, pedi­atric researchers con­tin­ue to expe­ri­ence dif­fi­cul­ty locat­ing chil­dren and fam­i­lies who are will­ing to enroll in clin­i­cal tri­als.

Recruit­ment for pedi­atric stud­ies is ham­pered by sev­er­al fac­tors includ­ing eth­i­cal con­cerns with using chil­dren as sub­jects, reg­u­la­to­ry over­sight that is sig­nif­i­cant­ly more restric­tive for child tri­als than for adult tri­als, a lack of research infra­struc­ture, the need to obtain con­sent from par­ents, and the chal­lenge of deter­min­ing appro­pri­ate pay­ments for par­tic­i­pa­tion that are not coer­cive. [1]

These researchers were strug­gling with eth­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions con­cern­ing the use of mon­ey to entice par­ents to enroll their chil­dren in research stud­ies. These researchers didn’t think that par­ents should see the enroll­ment of their chil­dren in drug exper­i­ments as a mon­ey-mak­ing propo­si­tion. On the oth­er hand, they real­ized that mon­ey and gifts were very use­ful for bring­ing more chil­dren into phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal drug research.

They also not­ed that the num­ber of pedi­atric research par­tic­i­pants has been increas­ing. In 2006, they found that there were approx­i­mate­ly 45,000 chil­dren par­tic­i­pat­ing in exper­i­ments. There has also been an increase in the num­ber of Phase I stud­ies with nor­mal healthy chil­dren. In their review, only 9,817 of the 39,628 stud­ies list­ed on ClinicalTrials.gov includ­ed chil­dren.

The researchers indi­cat­ed that one of the most press­ing chal­lenges in doing pedi­atric clin­i­cal research is the lim­it­ed num­ber of par­tic­i­pants. Researchers often must net­work across sites or coun­tries to gain ade­quate num­bers of par­tic­i­pants. They often must expend sig­nif­i­cant ener­gy and resources locat­ing poten­tial sub­jects.

Dr. Tish­ler, and Dr. Staats Reiss dis­cussed how mon­ey is often giv­en in exchange for vol­un­tary par­tic­i­pa­tion. They stat­ed:

One review of the Centerwatch.com clin­i­cal tri­als list­ing ser­vice pub­lished in 2002 revealed that near­ly 25% of pedi­atric tri­als offered pay­ments to par­tic­i­pants that ranged from $25 for an inves­ti­ga­tion of influen­za med­ica­tions to $1500 for a pso­ri­a­sis-med­ica­tion study. In anoth­er study, [researchers] sent sur­veys to the IRB chairs [insti­tu­tion­al review boards] at mem­ber insti­tu­tions of the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Children’s Hos­pi­tals and the Office for Pro­tec­tion From Research Risks.

Six­ty-six per­cent of these insti­tu­tions used paid par­tic­i­pants, and there was wide vari­a­tion in pay­ment prac­tices across the sites (rang­ing from $1 to $1000 in cash and $500 in sav­ings bonds). Many of the insti­tu­tions in the Weise et al study (42%) used a com­bi­na­tion of incen­tives and/or pay­ments for both the chil­dren and par­ents. [2]

CPS Violates Parental Consent and Freedom of Speech

Isa­iah Rid­er suf­fers from a rare con­di­tion called neu­rofi­bro­mato­sis. When his moth­er took him to a hos­pi­tal in Chica­go that spe­cial­izes in his con­di­tion, they end­ed up tak­ing cus­tody of him over the objec­tions of his moth­er. Is Isa­iah part of a drug tri­al? More on Isa­iah Rid­er.

There are two fac­tors that nor­mal­ly lim­it child par­tic­i­pa­tion in med­ical and drug com­pa­ny research. The first is the require­ment for parental con­sent. Chil­dren nor­mal­ly can­not par­tic­i­pate unless a par­ent gives writ­ten con­sent. The sec­ond is the nor­mal right that peo­ple have to pub­li­cal­ly speak out in sit­u­a­tions where par­ents and their chil­dren are being coerced and com­pelled to par­tic­i­pate in drug com­pa­ny exper­i­ments.

We would expect that these two con­strain­ing fac­tors would keep chil­dren safe from becom­ing unwill­ing par­tic­i­pants in drug research. How­ev­er, there are sit­u­a­tions in which state agen­cies are able to avoid both of these con­straints and force chil­dren to become human guinea pigs.

The net­work of state oper­at­ed child pro­tec­tive ser­vice agen­cies (CPS) rou­tine­ly cir­cum­vent the rights of par­ents and chil­dren, and give per­mis­sion for physicians/researchers to force chil­dren to par­tic­i­pate in drug com­pa­ny exper­i­ments.

Chil­dren who are in the fos­ter care sys­tem and who are under the con­trol of Child Pro­tec­tive Ser­vices are eas­i­ly tar­get­ed for invol­un­tary inclu­sion in drug exper­i­men­ta­tion. Ide­al­ly, even if chil­dren are under CPS con­trol, their nat­ur­al par­ents should retain the right to give con­sent for med­ical treat­ment for their chil­dren whether it is rou­tine or exper­i­men­tal.

In prac­tice, how­ev­er, once CPS steps into a family’s pri­vate life and takes chil­dren out of the home and places them in fos­ter care, then parental over­sight regard­ing the health­care of their chil­dren is rou­tine­ly vio­lat­ed. Because these cas­es are involved in State Juve­nile or Fam­i­ly Courts (as opposed to Civ­il Courts), records are sealed and kept secret, sup­pos­ed­ly to pro­tect the chil­dren.

CPS Collects Federal Funds for Trafficking Children

Tonya Brown with Adopt­ed Son Christo­pher, who had a rare form of Leukemia. Doc­tors and CPS took Christo­pher away when she dis­agreed with the doc­tors over his treat­ment. Sto­ry here.

There is mon­ey to be made and lots of it! When­ev­er a child enters state CPS con­trol, fed­er­al fund­ing flows into that state. It is in the best inter­est of state bud­gets to bring chil­dren into the CPS sys­tem and to keep them there as long as pos­si­ble. States have a large incen­tive to take chil­dren and sev­er parental rights and put chil­dren up for adop­tion. Adop­tion brings even greater mon­ey into state bud­gets. The flow of mon­ey into CPS bud­gets helps main­tain the jobs of CPS work­ers.

The Alliance for Human Research Pro­tec­tion tes­ti­fied to the U.S. Con­gress about the flow of mon­ey into state bud­gets. They report­ed:

In 2004, the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment pro­vid­ed more than $7 bil­lion in ded­i­cat­ed funds for child pro­tec­tion. The bulk of these funds (almost $5 bil­lion) sup­port­ed chil­dren who had been removed from their homes. [3, 4]

In 2007 Joseph Doyle, an eco­nom­ics pro­fes­sor at MIT’s Sloan School of Man­age­ment, pub­lished a study which tracked at least 15,000 kids in fos­ter care from 1990 to 2002. It was the largest study of its kind at that time.

Although fos­ter care is meant to be a tem­po­rary arrange­ment, chil­dren stay in care for an aver­age of two years, and there are cur­rent­ly over 500,000 chil­dren in care (US Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices 2005). Rough­ly 60 per­cent of fos­ter chil­dren return home; 15 per­cent are adopt­ed; and the remain­der “age out” of fos­ter care (Fred C. Wul­czyn, Kris­ten Brun­ner His­lop, and Robert M. Goerge 2000). Three quar­ters of these chil­dren live with sub­sti­tute fam­i­lies, one-third of which are head­ed by rel­a­tives of the chil­dren. These fam­i­lies are paid a sub­sidy of approx­i­mate­ly $400 per month per child (Child Wel­fare League of Amer­i­ca 1999), and states spend over $20 bil­lion each year to admin­is­ter these child pro­tec­tive ser­vices (Roseana Bess et al. 2002). [5]

CPS and Medical Kidnapping

Chaunell Smith was tak­en away from her fam­i­ly by CPS after her moth­er ques­tioned her treat­ment. Was her cus­tody bat­tle an attempt to cov­er up med­ical mal­prac­tice? Sto­ry here.

CPS takes con­trol over all aspects of the lives of chil­dren. CPS sev­ers con­tact between par­ents and their chil­dren when par­ents don’t do what CPS demands, and will give per­mis­sion for fos­ter chil­dren to par­tic­i­pate in drug exper­i­ments. This is done even when the drug tri­als may be life-threat­en­ing. This is done, so it is said, to pro­tect the chil­dren, but such “pro­tec­tion” destroys the fam­i­ly unit, trau­ma­tizes chil­dren, and fre­quent­ly results in per­ma­nent harm to chil­dren.

The process that results in CPS seiz­ing chil­dren and plac­ing them in fos­ter care begins with alle­ga­tions of parental neglect or harm against their chil­dren. It is not unusu­al to find that such alle­ga­tions are with­out truth. Even so, CPS and the fam­i­ly court sys­tem may refuse to return chil­dren to their par­ents. Some­times, after many months or even years, chil­dren are returned after the exper­i­men­ta­tion is com­plete. But in many oth­er sit­u­a­tions, chil­dren are sim­ply put out for adop­tion. In these cas­es, unproven alle­ga­tions against par­ents can result in per­ma­nent loss of chil­dren with­out any oppor­tu­ni­ty for future con­tact. [6]

Par­ents, who have done noth­ing wrong, find them­selves with­out their chil­dren, and they have no recourse to get them back once they are adopt­ed by oth­ers.

CPS Does Not Help Families, But Destroys Them

The lofty goal that CPS once had many decades ago to strength­en dys­func­tion­al fam­i­lies and restore chil­dren to a safe and lov­ing envi­ron­ment with their bio­log­i­cal par­ents or with close rel­a­tives is long gone. Today, CPS does not fix fam­i­lies, rather, it destroys fam­i­lies in order to pro­vide pedi­atric sub­jects for clin­i­cal drug tri­als, to pro­vide desir­able chil­dren for adop­tion, and to keep fed­er­al dol­lars flow­ing into the state CPS bud­get.

Chil­dren are even more like­ly to be kid­napped by CPS work­ers for med­ical exper­i­ments when they have rare dis­eases. Such chil­dren are high­ly prized sub­jects for exper­i­men­ta­tion. This hap­pened in a nation­al­ly pub­li­cized case that was exposed in 2013. Justi­na Pel­leti­er was abduct­ed by offi­cials at Boston Children’s Hos­pi­tal and sub­ject­ed to dis­abling drug ther­a­pies.

The late state house sen­a­tor from Geor­gia, Nan­cy Schae­fer most like­ly gave her life in exchange for bring­ing CPS spon­sored med­ical abuse to light. [7] She pub­licly exposed many cas­es of med­ical kid­nap­ping, which involved CPS work­ers in numer­ous states.

Nan­cy Schae­fer describes the attack that is being waged against chil­dren for the pur­pos­es of drug exper­i­men­ta­tion and adop­tion. She points out how such state spon­sored child abuse is ulti­mate­ly an attack on the sov­er­eign­ty of par­ents to make deci­sions for their fam­i­ly with­out coer­cion and manip­u­la­tion from state agen­cies and the fam­i­ly court sys­tem. Nei­ther of these orga­ni­za­tions is oper­at­ing to pro­tect the fam­i­ly struc­ture. They are oper­at­ing under a new eth­ic, which is to do what is right for the child – and to ignore what is best for the entire fam­i­ly.

Chil­dren are now seen as autonomous indi­vid­u­als whom the state must pro­tect from par­ents. The rela­tion­ship between par­ents and their chil­dren is no longer val­ued and pro­tect­ed. Rather, par­ents are seen as poten­tial offend­ers who are con­sid­ered guilty of any charges that are brought against them. The wide range of par­ent­ing styles which was once per­mit­ted in our soci­ety is no longer val­ued. CPS work­ers, Fam­i­ly Court judges, and the author­i­ty of the state are now deter­min­ing what is nor­mal, and any par­ent who dis­agrees with them is sub­ject to retal­i­a­tion against their fam­i­ly and parental author­i­ty. Every­thing is based on what the state thinks is “best for chil­dren.”

It’s Now All about “What is Best for the Child” – Not the Family

Home­school chil­dren being removed from their fam­i­ly by force by CPS and sher­iff deputies. Sto­ry here.

As report­ed by Steven R. Isham M.A., L.B.S.W, in a recent arti­cle pub­lished by Health Impact News and MedicalKidnap.com, chil­dren who are seized by CPS and placed into long term fos­ter care do very poor­ly when com­pared to oth­er chil­dren. Fos­ter care is not usu­al­ly a safe refuge for dam­aged chil­dren, which allows them to heal. Rather, fos­ter care per­pet­u­ates the abu­sive and neglect­ful pat­terns in the lives of many chil­dren, which sets them up for long-term fail­ure as adults.

Steven Isham reveals that for­mer fos­ter chil­dren rarely become pro­duc­tive cit­i­zens who are able to take care of them­selves. He indi­cat­ed that by age 25, 61 out of 100 for­mer fos­ter chil­dren will be unem­ployed, 24 out of 100 will be home­less, 64 out of 100 males will be incar­cer­at­ed 32 out of 100 females will be incar­cer­at­ed, and only 3 out of 100 will have been able to com­plete a four year col­lege degree. [8]

U.S. House of Representatives Investigates Medical Trials of Foster Children

In 2005, a hear­ing with the title “Pro­tec­tions for Fos­ter Chil­dren Enrolled in Clin­i­cal Tri­als” was held by the U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. The Sub­com­mit­tee on Human Resources of the Com­mit­tee on Ways and Means, inves­ti­gat­ed whether ade­quate safe­guards were in place to pro­tect fos­ter chil­dren from being forced to par­tic­i­pate in drug stud­ies.

The alle­ga­tion that they were inves­ti­gat­ing involved clin­i­cal drug tri­als on AIDS drugs that were con­duct­ed dur­ing the peri­od from the late 1980s through 2001. In part they were look­ing back at the past and ask­ing if there were abus­es. They were also won­der­ing whether there were any inap­pro­pri­ate actions tak­ing place in more recent years.

The tes­ti­mo­ny could eas­i­ly be divid­ed into two camps.

The first camp could be called the pro­fes­sion­al camp. It con­sist­ed of U.S. Health and Human Ser­vices admin­is­tra­tors, pedi­a­tri­cians, pub­lic health researchers, and CPS admin­is­tra­tors. The sec­ond camp could be called advo­cates for injured chil­dren. This sec­ond camp con­sist­ed of rep­re­sen­ta­tives from var­i­ous children’s advo­ca­cy groups, bio­log­i­cal par­ents of fos­ter chil­dren who were tak­en by CPS, and var­i­ous oth­er indi­vid­u­als who were con­cerned about exploita­tion and forced exper­i­men­ta­tion on chil­dren.

In short, the pro­fes­sion­al camp did not believe there was a prob­lem. They believed the use of exist­ing insti­tu­tion­al review boards (IRBs), which reviewed all exper­i­ments involv­ing human sub­jects, would pre­vent abuse of chil­dren in fos­ter care. They also believed that oth­er ran­dom reviews con­duct­ed by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment would keep researchers from behav­ing uneth­i­cal­ly.

On the oth­er hand, the camp that was advo­cat­ing for parental rights and the pro­tec­tion of fos­ter chil­dren told a very dif­fer­ent sto­ry. They described med­ical abuse. They described indi­vid­ual events, and sys­temic prob­lems, and called for reform of the CPS sys­tem.

Mem­bers of the con­gress are very busy peo­ple. They do not sched­ule hear­ings on poten­tial­ly con­tro­ver­sial top­ics unless there is already suf­fi­cient evi­dence to war­rant the inves­ti­ga­tion. Some­times hear­ings are held to empha­size a prob­lem to raise aware­ness in prepa­ra­tion for their action. In oth­er sit­u­a­tions, hear­ings are sched­uled and wit­ness­es are care­ful­ly select­ed to qui­et a polit­i­cal­ly hot sit­u­a­tion, which could bring embar­rass­ment or lead to alle­ga­tions of crim­i­nal wrong-doing.

The sub­com­mit­tee invit­ed cer­tain wit­ness­es to speak to them and to answer ques­tions. All of the wit­ness­es were from the pro­fes­sion­al camp of gov­ern­ment admin­is­tra­tors, physi­cian researchers, and CPS admin­is­tra­tive staff. Invit­ed wit­ness­es were all direct­ly involved in reg­u­lat­ing drug exper­i­ments or respon­si­ble for con­duct­ing those exper­i­ments. Advo­cates for par­ents and chil­dren were not invit­ed to speak, but were per­mit­ted to sub­mit writ­ten tes­ti­mo­ny. [9]

When the Sub­com­mit­tee on Human Resources of the Com­mit­tee on Ways and Means, U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives met to exam­ine this prob­lem, Chair­man Wal­ly Herg­er, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Cal­i­for­nia made this state­ment:

Over the last 18 months, this Sub­com­mit­tee has heard hear­ings about a num­ber of issues affect­ing kids in the Fed­er­al, State child wel­fare pro­grams, and this issue is like many of them: It has the poten­tial for being explo­sive. The child wel­fare pro­gram in the rich­est, most pow­er­ful coun­try in the world is, and has been, often an abysmal fail­ure.

Now, we don’t need proof of more of that. We can give you all kinds of exam­ples of it. We know about kids los­ing their lives in the child wel­fare sys­tem. Prac­ti­cal­ly every State leg­is­la­ture every year deals with one case or anoth­er, and every­body wrings their hands, and the prob­lems go on. The kids are some­times locked up and some­times starved under the super­vi­sion of the agen­cies. We know the chil­dren have been used with­out prop­er super­vi­sion for drug test­ing. [11] (empha­sis added)

The first wit­ness to tes­ti­fy before the House sub­com­mit­tee was Dr. Don­ald Young, M.D., U.S. Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices, Prin­ci­pal Deputy Assis­tant Sec­re­tary for Plan­ning and Eval­u­a­tion. He pro­vid­ed exten­sive tes­ti­mo­ny regard­ing gov­ern­men­tal over­sight. Dr. Young con­clud­ed his remarks by stat­ing:

We con­tin­ue to address chal­lenges posed by the threat of HIV/AIDS and are com­mit­ted to basic and clin­i­cal research to strength­en the nation’s abil­i­ty to cope with this infec­tious dis­ease. The pro­tec­tion of human sub­jects, includ­ing chil­dren, in clin­i­cal tri­als has been and will remain a top pri­or­i­ty for HHS. HHS is firm­ly com­mit­ted to the pro­tec­tion of the rights and wel­fare of every indi­vid­ual who par­tic­i­pates in human research con­sis­tent with sound eth­i­cal stan­dards and reg­u­la­to­ry require­ments.

Lat­er in the hear­ing, Dr. Young was asked if any changes were need­ed in regard to fos­ter chil­dren and their par­tic­i­pa­tion in drug exper­i­men­ta­tion. Dr. Young stat­ed:

We are not aware of any changes that we believe need to be made. If they are iden­ti­fied, we will be very hap­py to con­sid­er them and make a deci­sion as how best to pro­ceed. We share with you the con­cern about the ade­quate pro­tec­tion of fos­ter chil­dren. At the same time, the oppor­tu­ni­ty to let them par­tic­i­pate and get the advan­tage of clin­i­cal research, if that is theirs and their guardian’s deci­sion.

Advocates for Parental Rights Blow the Whistle on Drug Trial Abuses

The tes­ti­mo­ny pro­vid­ed by advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tions, par­ents, and con­cerned pro­fes­sion­als told a very dif­fer­ent sto­ry. Most were not inter­est­ed in dis­cussing the past AIDS drug tri­als, but were nar­row­ing in on what they saw as cur­rent abus­es in 2005.

Their tes­ti­mo­ny exposed a pat­tern of fos­ter care abuse that has con­tin­ued to wors­en over the past ten years. The abuse now has to do most­ly with forced exper­i­men­ta­tion on fos­ter chil­dren with psy­chi­atric drugs, or the treat­ment of chil­dren with very rare dis­eases.

I am the Nation­al Vice Pres­i­dent and Co-founder of Ablechild.org, a non-prof­it nation­al par­ent orga­ni­za­tion that works on edu­cat­ing the pub­lic on the issues of informed con­sent and the right to refuse psy­chi­atric “treat­ment”. Our orga­ni­za­tion is very con­cerned with the out­come of this hear­ing because we hear direct­ly from par­ents vic­tim­ized by the traf­fick­ing of their chil­dren into clin­i­cal drug tri­als while in state cus­tody.

Ablechild has doc­u­ment­ed cas­es of chil­dren who have been placed on drugs, com­plete­ly unaware that they are par­tic­i­pat­ing in a clin­i­cal drug tri­al, and with­out know­ing that they have the right to “opt out” of par­tic­i­pat­ing. The fact is, the State holds the respon­si­bil­i­ty of pro­vid­ing informed con­sent to par­ents and chil­dren, and lacks any pro­ce­dure to pro­tect and safe­guard this right.

Our orga­ni­za­tion points out the prob­lems that result­ed from strate­gies designed to tar­get and exploit these chil­dren. The Con­necti­cut Advo­cate report­ed these result­ing prob­lems in its June 5th, 2001 arti­cle, “Study Calls for Review of Psy­chi­atric Drugs Pre­scribed to Kids.” With­in this news sto­ry, the authors of a new study ques­tioned why 396 chil­dren under 4 years old cov­ered by Med­ic­aid were pre­scribed psy­chi­atric drugs. Some of these chil­dren were less than 1 year old.

A clear con­flict of inter­ests exists between the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try and the exper­i­men­ta­tion occur­ring on chil­dren with­in state cus­tody. This fact is clear­ly demon­strat­ed by work­shops spon­sored by the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and biotech­nol­o­gy indus­tries designed to opti­mize strate­gies for drug devel­op­ment and tri­als in chil­dren.

Glo­ria Wright, also from Ablechild.org, added these com­ments to the sub­com­mit­tee in a sep­a­rate let­ter:

Our orga­ni­za­tion fre­quent­ly hears from par­ents across the nation who implore us for assis­tance in the mat­ter of the clin­i­cal trial/experimental drug­ging of their chil­dren while in state cus­tody and in fos­ter care. These chil­dren have been placed on clin­i­cal tri­al drugs with­out a legal advo­cate respon­si­ble for safe­guard­ing their health, or their life. As minors these chil­dren are unable to opt out of these tests/experiments, the par­ents have been denied their right to dis­sent and there obvi­ous­ly are no pro­ce­dures in place to safe­guard the rights of the chil­dren.

State­ment of Linn Asplund, a par­ent from Water­bury, Con­necti­cut:

Thank you for con­sid­er­ing my tes­ti­mo­ny. When my son was 10 years old, he was attend­ing Wash­ing­ton School in Water­bury, CT. He start­ed hav­ing prob­lems in the begin­ning of third grade, Sep­tem­ber 1999. He was being picked on and bul­lied by the oth­er chil­dren. His grades start­ed suf­fer­ing and he too start­ed hav­ing dis­ci­pline prob­lems. This bul­ly­ing was brought to the school’s atten­tion, but it still went on. The prin­ci­pal sug­gest­ed a PPT. I agreed and at the first PPT I agreed to have him test­ed. I was then told he was “LD” (Learn­ing Dis­abled), but it was not that bad.

Next they told me they want­ed him to see a psy­chol­o­gist for a psy­cho­log­i­cal eval­u­a­tion, I agreed. I obtained a copy of the eval­u­a­tion. My son told the doc­tor that he had no friends at school. He liked it bet­ter at home and would wake up repeat­ed­ly at night with thoughts of how to quit school. By this time Dr. Abra­mavich said my son was psy­chot­ic and need­ed to be med­icat­ed. I refused. The next thing I knew, DCF (Depart­ment of Chil­dren and Fam­i­lies) was at my door telling me the school said my son has spe­cial needs that need to be tak­en care of. I still refused the psy­chi­atric drugs. I brought him to “child guid­ance” and was told that he was a nor­mal child.

After sev­er­al vis­its from DCF I still refused to drug my son. On March 16th 2000, I found court papers on my doorstep. In them my hus­band and I were charged with abuse and neglect and were informed that DCF was going to take our son from us. Lat­er that day a social work­er and police offi­cer arrived and took him away.

Two weeks lat­er, DCF placed him in Water­bury Hos­pi­tal where Dr. Edwards gave my son Hal­dol and Attavan–mind alter­ing drugs not approved for use in chil­dren. A few days after this, Dr. Men­nessen put him on 100 mg of Well­butrin a day; also not FDA approved for use in chil­dren. When I asked Dr. Men­nessen why he was giv­ing my son this drug with­out my con­sent, his reply was “we need a num­ber of cas­es to get it FDA approved.” (empha­sis added)

Conclusion: CPS and Doctors are Kidnapping Children for Medical Research

Images from a few of the sto­ries we have cov­ered at Health Impact News and MedicalKidnap.com.

It is hard to deter­mine the exact num­ber of clin­i­cal drug tri­als that are cur­rent­ly in process in the Unit­ed States, or to deter­mine how many chil­dren are in such tri­als. This prob­lem was iden­ti­fied at the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tive hear­ing in 2005, and it still remains a prob­lem ten years lat­er.

If data from Europe can be used as a yard­stick to com­pare the involve­ment of chil­dren in clin­i­cal stud­ies, then the scope of drug test­ing on chil­dren has increased dra­mat­i­cal­ly since the 2011 data, which was pre­sent­ed at the begin­ning of this arti­cle.

The Euro­pean Union Clin­i­cal Tri­als Reg­is­ter cur­rent­ly dis­plays 25,527 clin­i­cal tri­als, of which 3,662 are clin­i­cal tri­als con­duct­ed with sub­jects less than 18 years old. [10]

The CPS sys­tem is set­up in such a way that its activ­i­ties with spe­cif­ic fam­i­lies are secret. They hide behind con­fi­den­tial­i­ty laws to pre­vent pub­lic over­sight. They threat­en par­ents with per­ma­nent loss of their chil­dren if they speak pub­li­cal­ly. The fam­i­ly court sys­tem adds its author­i­ty to demand that par­ents remain silent. All the while, fam­i­ly after fam­i­ly is threat­ened and bro­ken. Chil­dren are brought into drug exper­i­men­ta­tion pro­grams, and oth­ers are pro­vid­ed for the adop­tion busi­ness, which brings even more mon­ey into state cof­fers.

CPS inten­tion­al­ly does not place chil­dren with fam­i­ly mem­bers, because the chil­dren bring in greater income to the state when they are placed in fos­ter care home. CPS often acts quick­ly to put chil­dren up for adop­tion, because the cash pay­ments that the state will receive are sub­stan­tial. In short, the vio­la­tion of parental rights is a mon­ey mak­ing propo­si­tion for state gov­ern­ment. The mon­ey per­pet­u­ates the CPS sys­tem, and allows abuse to hap­pen in the name of “pro­tect­ing” chil­dren.

Physi­cians are required by law to report to CPS any sit­u­a­tion that looks like child abuse or med­ical neglect. This is a tick­et for CPS to inves­ti­gate, seize chil­dren, meet their quo­tas, and start bring­ing mon­ey into the state bud­get. Since Amer­i­can cul­ture has been trained to idol­ize and even wor­ship the judge­ment of physi­cians, then most par­ents have lit­tle pow­er to fight both the judge­ments of CPS and the med­ical estab­lish­ment. The Fam­i­ly Court sys­tem works hand in hand with CPS and physi­cian rec­om­men­da­tions, and gives lit­tle respect to the desires of par­ents.

Chil­dren with rare dis­eases, espe­cial­ly rare genet­ic dis­eases, are very vul­ner­a­ble to CPS med­ical kid­nap­ping and abuse. If par­ents don’t agree with a doctor’s treat­ment plan, then the doc­tors can noti­fy CPS that the par­ents are neglect­ing their chil­dren by not doing what the doc­tor rec­om­mends. Once this hap­pens, par­ents lose the right to make inde­pen­dent deci­sions for their chil­dren.

Once con­trol over a child’s life is tak­en by CPS and the med­ical care sys­tem, then parental rights are ignored. Par­ents are not usu­al­ly con­tact­ed to obtain per­mis­sion to allow their chil­dren to par­tic­i­pate in drug tri­als. If they are con­tact­ed, and refuse to give per­mis­sion, then they will be ignored and may have future con­tact with their chil­dren denied. The parent’s health insur­ance com­pa­nies can be billed for treatments/services that par­ents did not approve. Pay­ments can even be made for drugs giv­en to chil­dren that have not been approved for use with chil­dren by the USFDA.

In a let­ter writ­ten by Sharon Schuldt to the House com­mit­tee that exam­ined clin­i­cal drug test­ing on fos­ter chil­dren, she gave us a seri­ous warn­ing. She wrote:

There was hor­rif­ic dis­re­gard for human­i­ty that took place in World War II Ger­many, some of which start­ed out being direct­ed toward the weak and vul­ner­a­ble, in orphan­ages and hos­pi­tals, but then was direct­ed to mil­lions who lost their lives in the con­cen­tra­tion camps. A soci­ety does not just lose their regard for human life overnight. It is a step at a time down­ward and soon that soci­ety slips fur­ther and faster down­ward. Many vowed, “Nev­er Again.” We in the U.S. can­not and should not be allow­ing access to our chil­dren for med­ical research. There is no argu­ment that jus­ti­fies it!

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